“Yep.”
“And I should have realized this because you told me and because you didn’t come home last night and I therefore shouldn’t have barged in here?”
“Do you have a point other than that you’re a bastard who woke me up?”
By now, Parker had struggled out of bed and put on a pair of jeans and a shirt.
“I’m thinking I should call this whole thing off.”
Parker jumped then stood still. “Call what off? What I think you are calling off?”
“Yes. Yep. I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
“Tell me what you are thinking.”
Toby didn’t tell him about what had happened. That was between him and Abbie. He wouldn’t say anything about that until he worked things out with her and knew where they both stood. If he wanted to have a serious relationship with her, he owed her that much at least.
He did, however, go into how the jokes weren’t bothering him as much and he figured Abbie wasn’t as bad as he was making her out to be. And hadn’t everybody done things when they were drunk that they later regretted?
Parker just listened. “It sounds like you’ve made up your mind,” he said when Toby was finally finished.
Toby nodded and sat down. “I think you’re right. I think I have.”
“Then what’s bothering you?”
“I’m not sure. In all honesty, I think it’s just that this is anticlimactic. We’ve been working so hard to craft this perfectly, and here I am ready to end it all without Abbie ever even knowing how she made me feel. I almost want to do it just so it wasn’t such a big waste of time. How horrible is that?”
“It’s not horrible. I feel a little disappointed myself. Put some excitement in my life. But that should not affect your decision. You tell me what you want me to do. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”
“Thanks, Park. I’ll let you know soon.”
Parker went back to his room and pulled up the post. He read it again. And then he read it again. And then he read it a third time. He put down his phone and laid back on the bed, his arms at his side. He didn’t feel anything. Every other time he read it, he felt anger, humiliation, and a slew of other emotions he didn’t like feeling. Every other time he read it, he was overcome with an urgent need to strangle Abbie, to make her pay. He had felt sick, he had felt like quitting his job and moving to a place where nobody knew anything about this. He had felt a lot of things, but he had never felt nothing. He smiled. It was pretty clear what he was going to do.
9
Parker surfed the web, wishing he was still asleep. Part of the reason for this was that he had worked the night shift and under normal circumstances he would still be asleep at this time. But the bigger reason he wished he was still asleep was so that he wouldn’t have heard about Toby’s new plan, which was to cancel their plan and act like nothing had ever happened and they had not conspired against a girl who had only made a dumb mistake. And also, Parker had been informed, he was still getting credit for the favor, which meant they were now even.
Okay, he could admit it, now. He wanted this to happen. He wanted to meet this Abbie, who had so thoroughly entered his life. He had never even met her, and yet she wouldn’t leave his head. He met a woman at the gym. She was hot, she was single, and she was clearly interested. Parker thought about asking her out for drinks that night. But then he thought about how he still had several more posts left and then he would have read all of them. Get to know a beautiful woman he knew in real life and could actually date without having to lie and/or betray his best friend? Or find out more about a woman that he had never met who was off-limits except for the purpose of breaking her heart, which he didn’t want to do? The obvious choice was the former. So explain to him why he found himself back at home, sitting at his computer, dateless on a Saturday night.
There were things he knew for sure:
1. Toby’s news was good news because Parker was not sure he could have gone through with it anyway.
2. Toby’s news was bad news because it was unlikely that Parker would ever get to meet Abbie, unless Toby forgave her more than Parker knew, and he got to meet her as his best friend’s girlfriend. And that was something Parker didn't want to think about.
3. It was good news that Toby had come to his senses. There had been certain moments when Parker had worried about his friend’s mental health. It couldn’t be healthy to be this angry for this long.
4. It was bad news that Abbie would never know how Toby was using her.
No. Wait. What was he thinking? This was his friend he was talking about, and he shouldn’t be thinking uncharitable things like that. And, okay, there was a selfish reason that he shouldn’t be wishing Toby would get caught in his deceitfulness: if Toby was caught, then so was Parker. And he really didn’t want Abbie to know what he had been planning on doing to her.
In the end, the only real thing Parker knew was that he really didn’t know what to think. He had seen this coming, though. He should have meet Abbie a week ago at least. He knew enough about her to completely win her over, and what he didn’t know, he could find out when he got to know her personally, but Toby kept saying it was too soon.
“We should wait, man,” he repeated over and over and all Parker wanted to ask was, “Why?” He didn’t though because he knew why. They weren't going to go through with it, and the only thing he could do was wait for Toby to realize this as well.
What he wondered, though, was just what his duties as best friend were in this situation? Exactly what were Toby’s thoughts? If he truly had no grudge against her, then it was not a crime for Parker to meet her for real, was it? He could set up a meeting between the two of them, and he could be the real Parker, not the version he had created. Parker was pretty sure Abbie would still like the real Parker even if he was not one-hundred percent what she wanted. He could go by their office to see if Toby wanted to have lunch, he could introduce himself to his coworkers, one of whom was Abbie. He could…
What he needed to know was just how Toby really felt about Abbie now.
“I have forgiven her,” Toby said when Parker asked him how he felt. “That’s all.”
If that was true, then the path was clear. If it wasn’t, and Parker had a strong feeling it wasn’t, then there was nothing he could do except find a way to forget about the whole thing.
Once again, being a good friend was hard. He turned off his computer. He had been planning to finish reading through her posts, but he wouldn’t. What was the point now?
He walked around his room, checked his phone, thought about calling up some friends for a pickup game. He flipped on the TV and looked for something to watch. He tried to take a nap. Yep. It wasn’t working. Nothing was distracting him, and there was his laptop. It didn’t hurt to look. It was just a way to pass the time. Nothing else. Yep. Definitely innocent.
He sat at his desk and flipped it on. It was bookmarked for him by this point. And there it was, plain as day, a new post.
Since the one about Toby, every week Abbie had simply posted an old one with a note that it was recycled from an earlier post. But there was no recycle notice on this one. He read it quietly and shook his head. His heart started to race. He had to take deep breaths to try to calm down. What did he do about this?
He knew what he wanted to do, of course. But is it what he should do? Yes. He decided. It was better that this come from him and not the lady from Toby’s work. He had a feeling that Toby was not going to be pleased. This was bad. This was possibly worse than the first one. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how much she must have been drinking to make this seem okay.
If there was anything in life that Parker prided himself on, it was that he was a good person. He was a good son, a good brother, a good uncle, and most definitely a good friend. Which is why he tried his best not to smile as he knocked on Toby’s door. He had a feeling he was going to meet Abbie after all.
Strange Love or: How I Learned to Stop Talking and Love Being Anon
Abbie Baker | On April 11, 2015
Hi, everyone! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? And do you want to know why? Of course you do. I have been doing my best to just keep my mouth shut because I finally learned what most people know when they are about four years old: sometimes words hurt. And many of the words that I have used have (or could have) hurt many of the people that I love. Umm. I mean...don’t dislike. That’s right, my loyal friends, I have finally developed a conscience. With that in mind, I would like to issue an apology to my…friend…not even that…my work friend Toby. I wish that was not the way I had to describe him. Alas, though, I opened up my big mouth to you guys, and now I have to be thankful to at least have that.
Toby, I know you might not read this on your own, but I trust that someone is going to tell you about it, so you are guaranteed to read it eventually. And I don’t know if you are going to talk to me anymore, so here I am baring my soul once again. I am sorry. You have heard me say that before, and you say that you are fine, but I just cannot fully believe you mean it. If you did, you wouldn’t have been so afraid to kiss me. You would have just gone for it. I know you wanted to, and I wanted you to as well. And that is my fault. Everything is my fault.
Here’s where I am going to fix everything I did to you in my last post. I am going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth:
On that fateful night, readers, Toby was late to pick me up. But he called me right before – so I shouldn’t have been mad. But I was. I really was. I was so mad, that I didn’t do my share of the talking and that made him nervous. Because when you have to do all the work to carry a conversation, it’s tough. Toby taught me this. You see, he ran into me today and wouldn’t talk to me just to teach me this very lesson. It is hard to think of things to say when the other person isn’t talking back. I know that now.
And now for the last thing. For that part that must have really hurt him: the movie theatre molestation. I made it all up. I try to be so honest here, normally, but I was so sad that day that my date had not gone well I guess I subconsciously wanted to hurt him. So I used someone else’s story and pinned it on him.
Now I’ll tell you the truth. Toby Lakeland has never touched me once in a way I didn’t want him to. In fact, I wish he touched me more. I wish he wasn’t so scared to make a move. I wish he would…I cannot tell you what I wish he would do here. But I would tell Toby just what I wanted him to do if he would only listen. It’s dirty, though, Toby. I hope you like being dirty, Toby, because I know we can do some amazingly dirty things together. And I would like it. I’d never tell people you were making me do things I didn’t want to do. I’d want it. I’d want it even more than you probably. Because you’re so good, and you probably don’t do bad things with bad girls like me. But I promise you that I would make you like being bad, but only when you are being bad with me.
You all might be asking why I am telling you all this in a post talking about how I know I shouldn’t talk about people, but there is a perfectly good reason: I have to embarrass myself as much as I embarrassed him and maybe then he won’t be so mean to me anymore. Only he isn’t mean to me at all. He is friendly. Too friendly. I don’t want to be friends, Toby. I wanted to be in the type of relationship that means we can do the type of things I talked about in the last paragraph.
So now I have made us even. Because now we are both embarrassed, but you don’t have to be since I told everyone you were innocent in everything. You aren’t boring or arrogant or too handsy. Your hands are perfect, and I want to feel them on me again.
So here is what I want all of my readers to know, but Toby, I want you to know the most: I am not going to write about people on here anymore unless they deserve it. I am not going to make fun of men like Toby because I don’t want to hurt their feelings. It’s mean of me. So after I make all of my confessions, I am going to stop talking and be just another anonymous person who dates anonymous people. And I want you, Toby Lakeland, to be my anonymous person.
Please say yes. You don’t have to tell me on here: I know you like to be private. Just tell me. Tell me what you think of me. Tell me you don’t want to just be friends. Tell me you want to kiss me and touch me and do all the things to me that I want to do to you. And there are a lot of things I want to do to you, things I have never wanted to do to anyone ever.
All I could do since you left me so unsatisfied today is drink. That is what happens when you aren’t happy with me: I have to drink to stop feeling so sad. I don’t want to feel this way anymore. I don’t want to have to drink because of how you make me feel. I just want you. So please forgive me. Please really forgive me and like me again like you did before.
Remember? Remember, Toby? You asked me out on the date. You came up to me in the break room when nobody else was around and you were so cute and embarrassed and you even blushed and I thought to myself, “Aw, he is so adorable when he is nervous.” And then you asked me if I wanted to go to dinner with you, and I did. I really did. You asked me out and you were nervous and so I know you really liked me. Please like me again.
I have to go now because I have to cry again. If someone reads this before tomorrow, please tell Maggie to come home and take care of me.
And after this post, I will no longer be talking about my dating life, you guys. I am going to take a break from blogging for a while, and when I come back, it is going to be bigger and better and anonymous-ier. It might pop up at any time, and it could be about whatever the newly anonymous writer (I mean me) wants to write about. But it will not be about Toby.
Toby, I cannot wait to see you at work on Monday (but only if you really, truly forgive me this time and want to start to love me like maybe I could start to love you.)
Goodbye for now everyone,
The Newest Anon
10
‘Abbie, wake up, Abbie, Abbie.” Someone was shaking her, and that someone seriously needed to go away.
“What? What?” She whined and rolled over.
“You need to get up.”
“No. No I don’t. I need to sleep until the pain goes away.”
“Honey, we need to talk, and I don’t think the pain is going to go away for a long, long time.”
“Just give me some hair of the dog. I’ll be fine. But don’t be loud. You are too too loud.” She pushed Maggie’s arm away and buried her head underneath the nearest pillow. “You bitch,” she groaned when the pillow was snatched away. And yelled louder when it came crashing down on her head. She shot up in the bed. “What?! What?!” she cried before the pain of her sudden movement hit her. “Oww,” she moaned, “please just leave me in peace.”
“Nope. Drunk Abbie is at it again, and I need Sober Abbie to return so that we can fix the damage. Well, so we can lessen the damage. I don’t think we can fix this.”
Abbie furrowed her eyebrows and looked at her best friend for the first time that morning. No, a glance at the clock would tell her it was the afternoon, some might even say early evening. Maggie did not look good. Her hair looked as if she had been running her hands through it and her face was scrunched up into an unattractive frown.
“You look awful,” Abbie told her. It was a best friend’s duty to be completely honest, after all.
“I have never wished I had a mirror more, Pot.”
“Hardy har, Kettle.” The girls smiled in spite of themselves because even in this state, they understood each other’s jokes. Unfortunately, as suddenly as she had started, Maggie stopped, and her laughter was replaced with sadness and worry. Abbie had a sinking feeling that the sadness and worry had something to do with her. She didn’t even know what Maggie was going to tell her, but she already felt nauseated.
“How much of yesterday do you remember, sweetie?” Now Abbie was really worried. Maggie hated terms of endearment. The only time she used honey/sweetie/baby/love was when she was talking to a child or someone she felt needed mothering.
“I remember that there was a yesterday,” Abbie said helpfully, “but
I don’t remember much about it.”
Maggie nodded her head. “That’s what I figured.”
“What did I do now?” Abbie’s heart sped up to an alarming rate as she asked this. She was having trouble breathing. If Maggie was this concerned, it had to be something horrible.
“I cannot tell you so much as show you,” she handed Abbie her tablet with Abbie’s Outings pulled up. Four hundred comments, she saw before she even read it. This could not be good. With every word that she read, more and more color drained from her face. Maggie’s eyes got large as she watched Abbie read. She had to be ready to stop Abbie from whatever it was she was about to do. But Abbie didn’t do anything. She just fell back onto the bed where she was surrounded by used tissues from the night before, the red around her eyes making it clear that she had not been lying in her post when she said she was going to cry again. There had definitely been tears in this room, and there would be more soon.
After a few minutes, Maggie asked, “Are you alright?”
“No,” Abbie whispered, but Maggie took it as a good sign. She had, after all, responded at all.
“What do you want me to do? Is there anything I can do?”
“Not to fix this. But you can prevent all of my future dumbass mistakes. All you have to do is get rid of all the alcohol in this house. I’m allergic to it. I have this strange reaction to it that causes me to do stupid things that embarrass me and everyone I know.”
Maggie rubbed her back and chuckled slightly in spite of herself.
“How hard is it going to be, Mags?”
“How hard is what going to be?”
“Finding a new job? Joining the witness protection program? Creating a whole new life for myself in a land without Toby and without you and without anybody that I have ever met and without anybody who knows what I have done?”
“Hey! You get this straight right now, young lady. I don’t care what you have done or what you are going to do or what you think you might be capable of doing at some point in the future: you are not going off to some other land without me. Understood?”
The Abbie Diaries: The Complete Series Page 5
